Premier Bill Vander Zalm and the Water War Crimes

If the Water War Crimes started underPremier Bill Bennett, they were taken to a higher level of duplicity by Premier Bill Vander Zalm who became Premier of British Columbia in 1986.

On September 25, 1989, the Government of British Columbia, again, acting illegally and operating outside the authority of the Water Act, signed a new and hugely more beneficial agreement with W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd.

Four days later, the Canadian law firms of Clark Wilson, McMillan Binch andMcCarthy Tetraultclosed a financial transaction that saw $4.2 million dollars invested in W.C.W. in exchange for 4 million shares. Approximately, one half, or 50 %, of those shares went to offshore accounts that the RCMP also refused to investigate. Although W.C.W. was a public company, the material terms of the contract were a closely guarded secret and never disclosed to the market.

This was insider trading at its finest, facilitated by the Government of British Columbia under the leadership Premier Bill Vander Zalm and three of Canada’s top law firms

In addition, eighteen months later, on March 15, 1991, four days afterSun Belt Water Inc. were selected by the Goleta Water District to supply fresh water from British Columbia because the price was $50 million less that the W.C.W. price [over seven years], Premier Vander Zalm and his Minister of the Environment, Cliff Serwa, destroyed all competition to W.C.W., by a Cabinet Order that gave W.C.W. an exclusive bulk water export monopoly through the creation of an illegal moratorium on the issuance of new permits to acquire water for export purposes.

With the secret contract and the moratorium by Order In Council, Premier Bill Vander Zalm, his cabinet and the Queen’s Representative, violated the Water Act, the Canada US Free Trade Agreement, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs and enacted measures that were intended to restrict or lessen competition and have the practical effect of creating a monopoly, in the USA, all of which amounted to contravention of American legislation aimed monopolistic trade practices.

A few weeks later, Premier Vander Zalm resigned as premier when a provincial conflict of interest report found he had mixed private business with his public office in the sale of the gardens. He was charged with criminal breach of trust, but found not guilty in B.C. Supreme Court in 1992.